Sunday, November 28, 2010

It is not often that one can see a complete overview of an art movement, but this is the case for the post-war French figurative school known as La Jeune Peinture, whose members practically all contributed to the series of print portfolios Sujet. I have the first five issues of Sujet, published between 1950 and 1953, and I believe that that is the complete set. Sujet was published by the artist Philippe Cara Costea (1925-2006), who was the organizing force behind the screenprinting collective that produced it. According to a website devoted to Cara Costea, the group was formed in 1949. The first issue is undated, but can be confidently dated to 1950 as several of the artists dated their prints '50, and the second issue came out in January 1951. Issues 3 and 4 also appeared in 1951, but the last issue was not published until June 1953.

Sujet 1: Io, vierge à cornes de vache

Paul Aïzpiri (1919- )

Antoni Clavé (1913-2005)

Gaëtan de Rosnay (1912-1992)

André Minaux (1923-1986)

Jean Souverbie (1891-1981)

Maurice Verdier (1919- )

Sujet contained no text save for a list of contributing artists, and the whole thing was quite economically produced. All the prints are silkscreens (serigraphs), and almost all are in black (there are a very few with a second colour). These are not the vivid, colour-saturated, garish silkscreens we associated with Pop Art, but sombre and restrained works that essentially seek to mimic the effect of original lithographs. I don't think that before WWII silkscreen had any acceptance in France as an artistic medium, so the choice of silkscreen for Sujet was an innovative one. I suspect that the reason for it was financial, as assuming Cara Costea had the necessary equipment, he could produce the whole thing without paying a separate printer, so the only costs were the paper, the ink, and the artists' time. I imagine each artist printed their own work, with the assistance of Philippe Cara Costea.

Sujet 2: Les mères

Antoni Clavé (1913-2005)

Paul Collomb (1921-1998)

Michel de Gallard (1921- )

Édouard Goerg (1893-1969)

Philippe Lejeune (1924- )

Paul Rebeyrolle (1926-2005)

As the title suggests, each issue centred on a particular topic. Sujet 1 was Io, vierge à cornes de vache. Sujet 2 was Les mères. Sujet 3 was Job. Sujet 4 was Autoportrait. Sujet 5 was La Mort. Io, virgin with a cow's horns; mothers; Job; self-portraits; Death. Each issue contained a selection of original silkscreens by various artists, almost all hand-signed apart from one by André Minaux (which is signed in the plate, suggesting he knew he would be unable to hand-sign) and except for three of the four works contributed by more established artists who were invited to be the star guest in each of the first four issues. These older artists, who were evidently regarded as mentor figures by the younger ones, were Jean Souverbie, Édouard Goerg, Roger Chastel (Chastel did sign his print), and Bernard Lorjou.

Sujet 3: Job

Paul Aïzpiri (1919- )

Philippe Cara Costea (1925-2006)

Nicolas Carrega (1914-1992)

Roger Chastel (1897-1981)

Roger Montané (1916- )

Orlando Pelayo (1920-1990)

The total number of prints published by Sujet is 54, of which 50 were pencil-signed by the artists. The edition was restricted to 200 copies. Of course not every artist associated with La Jeune Peinture is represented, but the only major omission is that of Bernard Buffet, whose spiky style and muted palette are typical of this anxious and sombre group. These artists who came of age during the horrors and privations of war are still gripped by a sense of loss and sorrow. It is notable that of the five portfolios, two depict characters who are archetypes of suffering - the nymph Io and the Biblical figure Job - while the last looks Death straight in the eyes. No wonder one popular word at the time for French art in the post-war period was Misérablisme. That said, some of these artists cheered up over time, and in future posts I will showcase some of their more colourful and vibrant work. For this post I have chosen 6 silkscreens from each of the five portfolios.

Sujet 4: Autoportrait

Philippe Cara Costea (1925-2006)

Daniel du Janerand (1919-1990)

Bernard Lorjou (1908-1986)

Orlando Pelayo (1920-1990)

Claude Roederer (1924- )

Claude Schurr (1921- )

Some of these artists are, or course, more famous now than others. Philippe Cara Costea is not a name I had come across before (and there is confusion about whether his surname should be hyphenated as Cara-Costea or not; he signs with no hyphen, but gives himself a hyphen in the contents). He is one of only two artists who contributed to all 5 issues, the other being Gaëtan de Rosnay. But whether their stars are still on the rise or have suffered a temporary eclipse, all of the contributors to Sujet enlarge our knowledge of the French art scene in the confused and confusing years after the Second World War, when Paris had lost ascendancy in the art world to New York, but did not quite realise it yet.

Sujet 5: La Mort

Nicolas Carrega (1914-1992)

Gabriel Dauchot (1927- )

Jean-Claude Vincent Guignebert (1921- )

Jean Jansem (1920- )

Abram Krol (1919- )

Jacques Yankel (1920-2004)

Those who remember my post on the 1950 portfolio Douze poètes, douze peintres will notice that six of the artist contributors to that are also contributors to Sujet: Aïzpiri, Krol, Minaux, Montané, de Rosnay, and Verdier.

Thursday, November 25, 2010

George Grosz (1893-1959) is best remembered for his violent satirical drawings of the decadent Berlin of the 1920s, which depict a corrupt world of leering businessmen pawing at prostitutes. These drawings were collected and reproduced in publications such as Ecce Homo (1923). Ecce Homo was seized by the Public Prosecutor, and in February 1924 Grosz was tried for obscenity and fined 6,000 marks. It was perhaps this that prompted an extended trip to France, for the whole of April and May of 1924, resulting in his first French exhibition in that November, and a further extended spell in France from June to October in 1925. Grosz had studied in Paris in 1912 at the Atelier Colarossi, at which time he met likeminded artists such as Moise Kisling and Jules Pascin, and made friends with Bohemian figures such as the writer Pierre Mac Orlan. It was to Mac Orlan that Grosz turned for guidance to the new post-war Paris. As Hans Hess writes in his excellent biography George Grosz, "In April 1924 Grosz travelled to Paris for the first time since the war. With his old friend, Pierre Mac Orlan, he visited Pascin, and with Francis Carco and Man Ray, explored 'Montmartre at night', making the typical remark all visitors make that they 'went to those hidden places which no foreigner ever gets to know'." The kind of hidden places Mac Orlan and Carco favoured is made clear in the subjects of Grosz's Paris drawings: the brothel Le petit moulin, another famous maison close in the rue Blondel, or the seedy Bar du Dingo, full of pimps and their girls.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Prix 300

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Au Beau Patron

Lithograph, 1926

It was probably the following year that George Grosz made the eight original lithographs in this post, for a novella by Pierre Mac Orlan entitled Port d'eaux-mortes (eaux-mortes means a neap tide rather than the literal "dead waters", though no doubt Mac Orlan liked the metaphorical heft of the phrase). The book was published in 1926 by Au Sans Pareil, in a total edition of 1260 copies, plus 120 suites of the lithographs on Chine, 40 on Hollande, and 20 on vieux Japon. The title page reads: Pierre Mac Orlan, Port d'eaux-mortes, récit orné de huit lithographies originales de Georges Grosz. The lithographs were printed by Duchatel, Paris. The bulk of the edition (including my copy) was printed on vélin Lafuma de Voiron.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Oncle Paul, accordéoniste

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: La Chance

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Filles dans la rue à Brest

Lithograph, 1926

The lithographs for Port d'eaux-mortes reprise many of Grosz's Berlin themes, but with a slightly less savage eye - though the frontispiece does set a dark tone, with its despairing and suicidal man sucking on a cigarette and cradling a bottle of brandy, with a pistol on the table and a noose hanging overhead, never mind the faceless prostitute mutely holding up her card reading Prix 300. The main action of the story takes place in the port of Brest, centering on the café-cum-brothel Au Beau Patron. Towards the end the narrative moves to Limehouse in London, before the villain Judat is hanged in Pentonville Prison (or Pontonville, as Mac Orlan insists on spelling it). Perhaps the most successful of the lithographs is the fourth, which I have called La Chance (all the titles are mine), in which a group of card-players remain enthralled by their game, while a murdered prostitute lies dying in her crib, and her slayer makes his getaway. But all of them have a great deal of suggestive power - just look at those phallic streetlamps that illuminate the girls on the street. Another thing that strikes me about these images is the subtle organisation of space - Grosz really fills up the available picture-space with exceptionally balanced and well-thought-out compositions.

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Pub à Limehouse

Lithograph, 1926

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: Filles dans la rue à Limehouse

Lithograph, 1926

A copy of Port d'eaux-mortes from Harvard College Library was included in the exhibition The Artist and the Book, 1860-1960 at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in 1961; see the catalogue of the same title by Eleanor M. Garvey, cat. no. 129, p. 91).

George Grosz, Port d'eaux-mortes: La prison de Pontonville

Lithograph, 1926

The presence of George Grosz in Paris had an electrifying effect on several Paris-based artists associated with Pierre Mac Orlan and Francis Carco. You can trace the influence on André Dignimont, on Chas Laborde, on Marcel Vertès, on Pierre Falké. Below is just a little gallery of images from these artists from 1926-1930, which show the impact of Grosz on the French scene. In the case of Laborde especially this case could be made more strongly with other material - etchings from Rues et visages de Paris (1926), for instance. Of course all these artists were also influencing each other, and were also working in the shadow of Pascin, but I think there is an identifiable shift towards a more expressionistic vision, especially in the art of Dignimont and Vertès.